


Sleep Well

by patroklassy



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Canon Era, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-01
Updated: 2017-02-01
Packaged: 2018-09-21 06:53:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9536780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patroklassy/pseuds/patroklassy
Summary: A collection of some of Erwin's lowest moments, and Levi's efforts to help him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to personally thank Johnny Cash's cover of "Hurt" for making me write this.

He thinks nothing will ever hurt as much as this. His whole body aches. The tears won’t stop. He curls up in the grass and presses a small hand to the slab of stone, tracing his fingers over his father’s name.

It feels, for now, like people have forgotten Erwin. But he knows someone will come searching before nightfall. The system is flawed, but he won’t slip through it that easily. They’ll take him off to the orphanage and who knows when he’ll get to come back to the cemetery again.

So for now he stares at the dash between his father’s birth- and death-dates and twists his free hand tightly into the long grass, twisting so hard it feels like it will cut his skin. He’s been crying on and off for four days straight and he’s exhausted, but he can’t sleep. He didn’t realise how much he relied upon someone wishing him sleep at night until there was no one there to wish it.

He thought he might find some solace here, close to his father again, but it’s not to be.

“Sleep well, Erwin,” he whispers to himself.  

The wind ripples the grass and chills his skin. He shuts his eyes tight, but lies awake for hours—until a member of the military police comes to take him away.

~

He had felt something like renewed hope when he saw the trio in the Underground, using the ODM gear like they were born to do it. Now Isabel and Farlan are dead, and somebody is knocking on his door.

“Come in, Levi,” Erwin calls, knowing who it is.

The door opens and Levi walks in slowly, calmly, putting a great deal of care into shutting the door behind himself. He glances at Erwin and away again, going to the couch and seating himself.

“How was your day?”

The absurdity of it is enough to make Erwin relax. This is why he is drawn to Levi. A day has passed since Farlan and Isabel’s funeral; if Levi was here to resign, Erwin couldn’t blame him.

Instead, he wants to know how Erwin’s day was. “It was busy, Levi.”

“There’s blood on your jaw.”

Erwin’s fingers go to his face, starting at his left ear and feeling their way around until the dried blood peels off beneath them near his chin. This is what happens when he shaves too quickly, his mind on other things.

“Excuse me a moment,” he says, rising from his chair to pass into his adjoining bathroom.

His tired face looks back at him from the mirror as he scrubs away the blood. When did he get this old? He laughs at himself. He isn’t old yet. Just weary.

“What’s so funny?” Levi asks, suddenly appearing in the mirror behind Erwin.

“You shouldn’t just walk into a captain’s personal bathroom,” Erwin says, catching Levi’s gaze through the mirror.

“Then kick me out.”

Erwin doesn’t. He bends and splashes cold water over his face, and then reaches for a towel to dry it—and finds that he doesn’t need to reach, because Levi is already passing him one.

“I don’t blame you,” Levi says.

Erwin is glad that he has the towel now to hide his own face.

“And they wouldn’t either. I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry for what happened. I’m here to follow you, Erwin. But . . . I will also stand by your side.”

Erwin slows, the towel over his mouth now, his fingers a tepee around his nose. He can’t make himself look directly at Levi, but he glances at him. Levi is looking away, too.

Erwin lets his hands drop to his side. He has close friends—Mike, Hanji and Moblit are dearer to him than life—but with Levi he feels, for the first time since he was a child, like he truly has someone looking out for him.

 “Thank you, Levi.”

“Sleep well.” And he leaves.

~

He runs his fingers through his hair and pulls so hard it hurts. Good. Contrary to popular belief, he _can_ still feel something.

The list of casualties from the fifty-seventh expedition lies upon his desk. It is alphabetical by surname; he scans it first for B, then J, then R, then S. What would Levi say this time? Would he yell?

A knock sounds at the door.

“Come in, Levi,” Erwin calls.

“This seems familiar,” Levi says, stepping in. He sounds exhausted.

How much have they both aged in the past six years? Erwin wonders if he has the right to reclaim himself as old now.

Levi asks, “How was your day?”

Erwin gives a grim smile. “You remembered. I’m so sorry, Levi.”

“Don’t be.” Levi goes to the couch and sits down. It’s painfully clear that he’s trying to keep it together for Erwin’s sake. “It’s Survey Corps life. It’s what happens. It’ll happen to us too, sooner or later.”

“At this stage, I’d take the sooner.” It’s intended as a joke, but Erwin furrows his brow at his own distastefulness. “Sorry, forget that.” 

“I came to check that you were okay, Erwin.”

Erwin’s brow furrows further. “I’m not the one who lost my squad.”

“Don’t give me that. I know every member of the Corps is important to you. So? Are you okay?”

Erwin spreads his hands. Even he isn’t sure what it’s meant to mean. Yes? No? Maybe?

“No, then.” Levi gets up. He goes to Erwin’s desk and walks around the back of it—passing so close to Erwin that he feels the displacement of air on the back of his neck—and pulls open the bottom drawer on the far side. Removing the bottle of whiskey that lies there, Levi pours a shot into the cap and passes it to Erwin.

Holding up the bottle, he says, “To my squad. And to all the rest.” His voice trembles.

“Your squad. And all the rest.” Erwin clinks the little cap against the bottle, and then takes the shot while Levi drinks straight from the bottle itself.

Swallowing, Levi asks, “What do you need, Erwin?”

“I need . . .” It feels like defeat, like giving up. There is still work to be done. Death notices to be signed. Erwin sighs, rubbing his hand over his forehead. “You got me. I need some sleep.”

Levi pours one more shot for Erwin, and takes one more himself, then cleans off the top of the bottle and screws the cap back on, returning it to its place in the bottom drawer.

“Erwin?” he says at the door. “Sleep well.”

~

Erwin twists the sheet around his fist.

“I told them to let you in,” he says.

He had. Even while they were doing the surgery, he demanded it over and over— _let Levi in let Levi let Levi in._ The truth had come out on his delirium; he needed Levi. And he had known Levi would never forgive him if he died before they saw each other again.

His eyes track Levi’s movement from the doorway to the dresser, and he doesn’t react when Levi kicks the dresser, or when he overturns it as if it’s made of air, or when he picks one of the chairs up and brings it splintering down against the floor. What does some broken furniture matter when Erwin is seeing it all break on a day he thought he would not live to see?

It’s the kind of anger he had expected over Isabel and Farlan, or over Levi’s squad in the fifty-seventh expedition, the anger that never came.

“I saw you,” Levi says. His chest heaves. Stepping around the broken furniture, his body sags as he sits by Erwin’s feet on the bed. “When they brought you in. Out cold. They said you had kept riding your fucking horse as if you hadn’t come within an inch of dying. They said you didn’t pass out until you were on top of the wall.”

Levi stands to give the broken dresser another kick, and then seats himself again heavily. His fingers push back through his hair. “I waited outside the surgery room. I heard it all.” His hands are still in his hair; his own wrists muffle his voice.

Erwin shifts a little and pain sears through his right shoulder, spreading across his chest and filling his body with an uncomfortable heat. He wants to cry out but he won’t let himself. Not in front of Levi. He can only imagine what it was like for Levi: the awfulness of it, sitting outside a windowless room and hearing _him—_ screaming, screaming, screaming.

Erwin has dim memories of the surgery. A voice echoes in his head—his own, guttural, _in agony_ , yelling for Levi because even when they were cutting away the mangled remainder of his arm, he was still ordering them to let Levi in.

“I thought you were dying,” Levi says, and then says it again. “I banged on the door and kicked it and swore at them and told them that you wanted me there, but they locked me out. I thought you were going to die and I was going to be ten feet away from you when it happened, kept away by a fucking door.”

Erwin thinks of the years before Levi, of the lonely, sleepless nights spent in his office. He still has plenty of those. But now, when things are at their worst, Levi is there. _Right now_ , Levi is here. _Sleep well._ When Levi says it, it always works.  

“How badly does it hurt?” Levi asks.

Erwin smiles. “Terribly. It’s good. I’ve earned it.”

“Don’t say things like that. You deserve to be happy.”

It sounds genuine coming from Levi. Maybe he does deserve to be happy.

Levi adds, “I won’t leave your side.”

In response, Erwin reaches out to grip Levi’s hand. He’s not sure if it’s meant to say _thank you_ or _I love you._ After a moment Levi gets up and goes to the spare chair in the room, the one left unbroken, and Erwin settles down into his bed.

Levi blows out the lamp. “Sleep well, Erwin.”

~

There is no body. A thousand times, there has been no body. But a thousand times, it hasn’t been his best friend.

Tears slide down his cheeks. When he first heard of Mike’s death, he had been too caught up in the immediate mission of rescuing Eren to let it sink in. And then he was waking up in the hospital bed with his arm missing. It was the next day that he questioned Levi about it.

Levi watches him now. He’s sticking by his word to stay by Erwin’s side, and so he bears witness to Erwin’s tears. He doesn’t say anything. He has already apologised during his explanation, and he has been through this himself: what words could possibly ease the hurt of a best friend’s death?

Erwin draws in a deep breath, and his body shudders as he lets it out. He shakes his head. “This is what my soldiers feel after every expedition, isn’t it? I can cut myself off. I can make sure it’s not personal to me. But Mike . . .”

Still, Levi says nothing. But he rises from the chair, climbs onto the bed, and settles himself at Erwin’s side, tipping his head so it rests on Erwin’s shoulder.

It’s the opening Erwin needs, and he silently thanks Levi for offering it. A life of isolating himself, and he finally feels desperate for the comfort of touch. Turning his head, he buries his face against Levi’s chest and lets the sobs wrack his body. Two decades of pain come out with them. He feels like a boy again, grieving for his father.

He had been stupid to think himself old. He is just a boy who doesn’t understand life without a best friend. 

When the tears stop, his face aches and he’s exhausted. He doesn’t move his head from where it rests, pressed to the warmth of Levi’s chest. Responsibilities rush back. He isn’t a boy after all.

But Levi puts an arm around him and says, “Get some sleep now. And sleep well.”

~

By the time he has a moment alone with Levi after his own release from the Military Police, and the ensuing rescue mission at the Reiss Chapel, the swelling around Erwin’s eye is all but gone, replaced with deep bruising. The first thing Levi does is flutter his fingers near it, about to touch but stopping himself, knowing it would hurt.

Erwin catches his wrist. It’s like the day they first met, but their collective emotions are almost opposite—tenderness where there had once been hostility.

“It was nothing,” Erwin says.

“It was torture.” There is deep pain in Levi’s eyes. He’s tired of seeing those closest to him suffer.

“You’ve tortured people.”

“Erwin, it’s not . . .” Levi trails off. Arguing with Erwin is almost always futile, especially when it comes to Erwin’s own health. “Your lip?” says Levi.

Erwin’s bottom lip is also a little swollen, split by one of his own teeth. “It’s fine,” Erwin says. “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

Levi breathes out slowly, and his next word is just a continuation of that breath: “Good.”

Then he grabs Erwin’s face and kisses him as gently as one can when they’re that desperate and they’re that relieved.

Pain shoots through Erwin’s bruised face, but when Levi comes to his senses and tries to pull away, Erwin doesn’t let him.

“Kiss me properly,” he murmurs against Levi’s lips.

So Levi does.

It makes Erwin’s lip start bleeding again. When they draw apart, there’s blood on Levi’s mouth which Erwin wipes away with his thumb.

“I’m exhausted,” says Erwin. He means, _Stay with me._

“You’re safe,” says Levi.

When Erwin climbs into his bed, Levi climbs in after him and wraps himself around Erwin.

He kisses Erwin over the heart and repeats, “You’re safe. Sleep well.”

~

It hurts so bad. He’s in class with his dad, his hand thrown up in the air, but why does it hurt so bad? _You’re dreaming._ But he can’t wake up. He tries.

Out loud he asks a question, his voice young and high. In his head he screams at himself. _Levi._ He can hear him. Where is he? He’s always here when Erwin needs him so _where is he?_

Erwin is still in his father’s class, sitting alone at his desk, but he feels a warm hand take his.

_Levi._

He remembers seeing the rock. He remembers the impact. He remembers the fall and skidding against the earth. All he wants now is to see Levi again.

The lights in the classroom flicker out. Outside, the sky darkens swift as an eclipse. Erwin’s side aches. God, it hurts so fucking bad.

He closes his eyes. He wants it to stop.

Levi’s voice reaches him and then his face, chased in by the dark: “Erwin? Erwin . . . _sleep well_.”


End file.
